David Macfarlane and Bongani Majola The protracted conflict between distance university Unisa and government heightened this week, when vice-chancellor Barney Pityana threw his weight behind the university’s controversial court challenge to Minister of Education Kader Asmal. Unisa’s council will be disbanded within three weeks if Asmal has his way. But in what senior Unisa academics interpret as the controversial council’s last gasp, the university has launched a high court action against Asmal challenging the planned merger of Unisa, Technikon SA (TSA) and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre (Vudec) on February 1. The merger will give rise to a single institution known as the Open Learning University of South Africa, according to last Friday’s Government Gazette. A five-member interim council headed by former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa, currently chairperson of TSA’s council, will oversee the daily running of the new mega-institution and arrange the appointment of a permanent council and other management structures, the gazette says. None of the five members are from Unisa: the council failed to meet Asmal’s December 13 deadline for submitting nominations Unisa launched its high court action on December 28 challenging the government’s right to go ahead with the merger as soon as February 1, alleging inadequate consultation and unrealistic time-frames. The case will be heard on January 22. This week newly appointed vice-chancellor Pityana justified the court action, saying: ”Nowhere in the world would such a tradition-filled institution be dealt with in such a way as the minister of education has done without consultation … [Asmal] didn’t consult us he consulted no one but himself.” But a senior Unisa academic comments that there has been ”so much bluster, so little effective management” from Unisa’s senior echelons and that an ”extremely weak” senior management team has been ”closing ranks” behind Pityana and council chairperson McCaps Motimele in an attempt to safeguard their ”huge salaries”. Pityana’s appointment to a five-year term of office, which started in November, is one reason for the ongoing and lengthy warfare between the minister and the council. Asmal last year requested Unisa, TSA and Vudec not to make long-term, senior appointments pending the merger. The merger is a central feature of the national higher education plan, which Asmal released nearly a year ago. It seeks to redress wide-ranging inequities and inefficiencies inherited from apartheid-era education policies.
But Pityana’s appointment was only one of several high-level posts the council filled last year in defiance of Asmal, who has repeatedly said he wishes to avoid the waste of taxpayers’ money that will be incurred in golden handshakes to senior managers who fail to find equivalent positions in the new mega-institution. The Pityana/Motimele cohorts within the council and senior management are ”unrepresentative” of Unisa staff, the majority of which fully support the merger, says Nick Coetzee, head of Unisa’s Academic Staff Association. Last year two staff petitions expressing no confidence in the council and calling for its dissolution attracted hundreds of signatures. ”This court action is the council’s last, desperate fling before they disappear,” Coetzee says.